Mitt Romney: I come in peace

With an apparent eye toward continuing his gains with female voters, Romney soft-pedaled his once-tough line on Iran, barely talked about Libya and came to close to articulating the “soft power” Democratic doctrine rooted in international women’s rights, sanctions and avoiding new wars at all costs.

“Let me step back and talk about what I think our mission has to be in the Middle East and even more broadly, because our purpose is to make sure the world is more — is peaceful,” Romney said during Monday’s face-off in Boca Raton in a performance Obama derided as one big shape shift. “We want a peaceful planet. We want people to be able to enjoy their lives and know they’re going to have a bright and prosperous future, not be at war.”

The third and final debate of the 2012 presidential election was supposed to be exclusively about foreign affairs. But it turned out to be as much about targeting women voters and the swing state of Ohio, with the optimistic GOP challenger taking a front-runner’s “first do no harm” approach — the same tack that hobbled Barack Obama in the first debate three weeks ago.

Democrats were encouraged by Obama’s performance, and thought Romney delivered a lackluster showing comparable to Obama’s Denver flop. Sometimes-Obama critic James Carville declared the mostly decorous 90-minute sit-down “a romp” — while most snap polls gave Obama an advantage ranging from small to big.

But Republicans downplayed the importance of the debate, casting it as the least important of the three and much less significant than Obama’s stumble in Denver.

Obama found himself in the last debate where Romney stood before the first, needing to attack in order to halt his opponent’s momentum. He delivered lines his campaign had once promised would never pass from the president’s lips: a car lot full of bumper-sticker zingers and sarcastic asides aimed at rattling Romney and reminding voters of his past positions, especially Romney’s opposition to an auto bailout that’s popular in the critical battlegrounds of Ohio and Wisconsin.

The line of the night, already being rerun on the cable networks, came when Romney blasted the president for allowing the the Navy to shrink to its smallest size, in terms of ship numbers, since World War I.